Faye Bridge
writes on October 10, 2014
23 year old Nick Bryan’s interest in the web came from a desire to learn how something we use everyday, and often take for granted, is both designed and implemented. When Nick then found himself, with a background and degree in Music Production, trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life, he decided to seize the opportunity and focus on his coding skills. After six short months learning web design and development with Treehouse, Nick was hired as a full-time web developer for a major computing firm, and now looks forward to going to work each day.
We caught up with Nick to ask a few questions about his learning experience and landing his first job in the industry!
What first drew you to the web industry, in particular web development?
Web design and development has always interested me. Trying to create websites for personal projects was my main starting point. Once I stepped into learning HTML and CSS I was hooked on code. I went on to learn C++ and PHP came next. I find it fascinating learning how the things we take for granted and use everyday are designed and implemented.
What work were you doing when you first joined Treehouse & what encouraged you to learn with us?
I was working behind a bar when I discovered Treehouse. I had been trying to figure out what to do with myself for a while. I came across an advert for Treehouse online and decided I would like to pick up programming again so I gave the free trial a go. After seeing the amount of content that was available and how well presented each track was I knew this was the right method of learning for me and thus got cracking.
What is your educational background?
I have a BA(Hons) degree in Music Production. I have always been torn between computing and music, I wouldn’t say computing won, but I can say that I can now enjoy my two passions in life properly.
You recently landed a new job, congratulations! Tell us a little a bit about it, and the experiencing of embarking on a new career in the industry.
I work for a major computing firm. It’s awesome, I develop API’s for internet service providers. We do most of our development in PHP and have an in house framework based on Laravel. For the front end we use HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery. Learning the business is the hardest part but it feels great when it all fits together. As cliche as it sounds, the best part about it is looking forward to going to work each day!
What has the value of a Treehouse education meant to you?
Treehouse has helped me step into a career I love! It provides training and education that I personally believe would be hard to find in any other environment. The Treehouse community are awesome and I will continue to learn from them throughout my career.
What are your plans for the future, and what’s up next on your learning path?
Plans for the future are to keep learning, become a better developer and check out the Laravel tutorials on Treehouse.
I really didn’t think I would ever make it as a developer without having a degree or relevant qualification. Thanks to Treehouse and the support of others I’m now in a career that I love and enjoy.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with new students who are aspiring web developers?
If you know in your heart what you want to do then go for it. I really didn’t think I would ever make it as a developer without having a degree or relevant qualification. Thanks to Treehouse and the support of others I’m now in a career that I love and enjoy. Theres always more to learn as a developer and I can’t say I have found a better community to do it with. Learn the code and be willing to learn the business, hard work really does pay off!
To read more student experiences, check out Treehouse Stories.
TeamTreehouse Plays an important role in my carrier, In the beginning I cannot afford to pay 25$ but one of my friend had bought the TeamTreehouse subscription.
I used his account to learn WordPress development. It was quite good experiecne. SKills which I learn is still working for me.
I have developed many wordpress plugins and theme.
I am running a successful website.
OpenGL Projects
I also used my own developed plugins in this WordPress website : OpenGLProjects.com
PS: I always recommend TeamTreeHouse.com who want to make carrier in Software Industry.
Thanks again.
TeamTreeHouse.com
Are you related to Faye?
Haha, I’m not related to Faye Bridge if thats what you mean? But weirdly I do have a sister called Faye.
You have been googled. 😉
IIT coaching means lots of hard work, extreme concentration and no distractions.
Furthermore degree holders bring in more cash, they also are less likely to be unemployed.
Now, however, they are in danger of being the norm, and
insufficient for the new breed of employer for whom paper
qualifications mean more than experience.
I’m sure he’s a really smart, nice guy, but I must admit I find the photograph of him smiling in front of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a bit odd.
I concur
I was a bit suprised by the photo myself.
Agreed – we asked him to supply another photo.
Thanks for sorting that out Gill.
Hi guys,
I can’t believe I overlooked this. My sincere apologies and I hope I didn’t offend anyone. Thanks for sorting it out and thank you for raising the issue.
That’s okay Nick, I’m sure no offence was intended.
haha 6 months, sure! One of these days it will be 1 day, 1 hour, and so on..
I understand some people have a success but this story seems so fake! 6 Months really to a fulltime job. Theres people here on this site since 2012 and they cant even land junior position.. please don’t bullshit us
Hi Joe, All our success stories are real. I’m sure you know enough about us to know that we wouldn’t make stuff up. Nick’s a hard worker, that’s really all there is to it.
6 months is fair. If you invest a lot of time you can learn a good base and score a junior position somewhere.
Yeah developing APIs after 6 months of training…sure.
Hi guys,
I can understand your thoughts, it was a surprise to me also! Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time, I don’t know. I can say though that I didn’t realise just how much I still had to learn when I started the job and it really was daunting.
In my first couple of weeks I got the chance to learn the specific technologies that the team were using, this included jQuery EasyUI, illuminate from Laravel (used in our framework) and the way in which the company implemented the MVC pattern.
I started building small APIs that where essentially reports on specified data from the database. I got given larger and larger tasks and I am now implementing and building APIs for some very large projects.
I was lucky to join a team who were looking to ‘mould’ a developer with a decent amount of experience into someone who they could depend upon for their business.
I have made my mistakes and I continue to learn an insane amount each day.
How about a link to their treehouse profiles?
Hi Tuba! You can check out Nick’s profile: http://teamtreehouse.com/nickbryan 🙂
Thanks for the great suggestion too, we’ll definitely include student profiles in future success stories on the Treehouse Blog.
Although, I am not a student of treehouse, these success stories have inspired me a lot. Thanks Treehouse. Treehouse is helping this much when I’m not a part of it. I wonder what awesome things will happen with me if I start learning here.
There is a lot to learn, in a wide range of subject areas. I would recommend it!
all the best
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Thanks
Congratulations, Nick! Your achievement is an inspiration to other Treehouse students. Best of luck in your new job.
Thank you =)
I’d really love more detail from these articles. The success stories are all well and good, really, but I want to read more about the grit shown when times were tough and how they overcame, and continue to overcome the biggest obstacles in their learning.
I agree, I would like to hear more details as well. Like, what sort of personal projects did he do to understand what he was learning, etc.
+1!
Hi Kim,
When I started learning I built the same application for both C++ and PHP. It was a console text based RPG that, looking back on it, had too many design flaws to explain. I started many projects, most of which found themselves archived in some folder somewhere on my hard drive. I tried to make various different games as I found they really helped me to learn OOP, especially games with RPG elements where you could create, for instance, a character base class that would be extended by a player class, enemy class etc.
I did various little projects using WordPress and building websites with a simple front-end that performed basic CRUD tasks.
I am currently writing a game using SFML and C++ in my spare time. I write in PHP and Javascript all day long so developing in C++ is a nice change for me.
Hi,
I appreciate the interest and would be happy to answer any questions that you have.
It was tough in certain ways. I’ve got to say the hardest part was trying to justify the change in career. Convincing family and friends, that giving up pursuing a career in music and focusing all my time and energy on learning to program was the right move, didn’t go down without it’s hurdles.
I didn’t really know many people who were interested in programming when I was learning so I had to depend on the internet to do most of my learning. I had one friend who had been in the industry for some time who was my go to guy if I got stuck with something and I can’t thank him enough for putting up with me.
Please feel free to fire off some more questions and I will answer them as best I can.
Story like this make me want to keep working in my coding skillsm thanj you for sharing. Cant wait to start working doing somethjng i love. Treehouse is the best !!!